Now at seventy-three volumes, this popular MLA series (ISSN 10591133) addresses a broad range of literary texts. Each volume surveys teaching aids and critical material and brings together essays that apply a variety of perspectives to teaching the text. Upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, student teachers, education specialists, and teachers in all humanities disciplines will find these volumes particularly helpful.

Education of a Native Son begins where the novel, Native Son, by Richard Wright ends. Thomas, a black young man who grew up in Harlem is accepted to a prestigious Ivy League university in New England. While in college Little, as he his known, will be confronted with the pressures of the everyday college student and the pressures of being Black at an all white university. In addition to adjusting to college life, he will soon learn the secret of his parents past, a past that could lead to the destruction of his family, friendships and ultimately his life.

This book is ideal for the thousands of teachers who entered the profession in the last ten years and taught prescribed curriculum geared toward end of year bubble testing. Its intent is to empower districts and their teachers to create their own (free!) curriculum that will exceed the expectations of Common Core assessments, as well as create life-long learners that are college and career ready. By employing inquiry based units of study that insist on the use of iconic literature at the center, students will be more prepared for what awaits them with Common Core exams.

First published, 1940. Novel about a young Negro who is hardened by life in the slums and whose every effort to free himself proves helpless

James Baldwin was beginning to be recognized as the most brilliant black writer of his generation when his first book of essays, Notes of a Native Son, established his reputation in 1955. No one was more pleased by the book’s reception than Baldwin’s high school friend Sol Stein. A rising New York editor, novelist, and playwright, Stein had suggested that Baldwin do the book and coaxed his old friend through the long and sometimes agonizing process of putting the volume together and seeing it into print. Now, in this fascinating new book, Sol Stein documents the story of his intense creative partnership with Baldwin through newly uncovered letters, photos, inscriptions, and an illuminating memoir of the friendship that resulted in one of the classics of American literature. Included in this book are the two works they created together–the story “Dark Runner” and the play Equal in Paris, both published here for the first time. Though a world of difference separated them–Baldwin was black and gay, living in self-imposed exile in Europe; Stein was Jewish and married, with a growing family to support–the two men shared the same fundamental passion. Nothing mattered more to either of them than telling and writing the truth, which was not always welcome. As Stein wrote Baldwin in a long, heartfelt letter, “You are the only friend with whom I feel comfortable about all three: heart, head, and writing.” In this extraordinary book, Stein unfolds how that shared passion played out in the months surrounding the creation and publication of Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, in which Baldwin’s main themes are illuminated. A literary event published to honor the eightieth anniversary of James Baldwin’s birth, Native Sons is a celebration of one of the most fruitful and influential friendships in American letters.

Education of a Native Son begins where the novel, Native Son, by Richard Wright ends. Thomas, a black young man who grew up in Harlem is accepted to a prestigious Ivy League university in New England. While in college Little, as he his known, will be confronted with the pressures of the everyday college student and the pressures of being Black at an all white university. In addition to adjusting to college life, he will soon learn the secret of his parents past, a past that could lead to the destruction of his family, friendships and ultimately his life.

Sea of Troubles has been designed for classroom teachers struggling to address the overwhelming issues facing our world today. By embracing the Common Core’s emphasis on the inclusion of more nonfiction, informational texts, the authors have demonstrated how to incorporate meaningful informational texts into their favorite units of literature. Sea of Troubles shows teachers how literature and informational texts can work together, to enhance each other, and, by extension, enhance student’s abilities to critically think and respond to the sea of troubles that pervades society.